Bhutan goes organic: a lesson for us all?

By banning the sales of pesticides and herbicides Bhutan has outlined a clear path for the future of its agriculture: it will become the first wholly organic country in the world.

Bhutan was already largely organic, but the recent decision announced at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2013 aims to make it possible for the tiny Himalayan country to cut the last bond with dangerous agricultural chemicals.

The goal is not only to go organic, but to grow more food as well. Bhutan aims to achieve this with a region-by-region and crop-by-crop approach. At the same time it will study and introduce new methods of growing traditional crops in order to increase yields.

This will set an example to show how ecological farming, which organic farming falls under, is a valid alternative to industrial agriculture when it comes to increasing food production. The only hurdle is in the consistency of investment, which ecological farming lacks when compared with the financial resources industrial farming attracts.

But apart from the higher yields, an added benefit is the boost to Bhutan's export potential as the country tries to increase organic foods exports to neighboring China and India, where the demand for organic produce is on the rise. It makes business sense!

Bhutan already has an important record to be proud of: it is a carbon neutral country and food secure while also being able to guarantee water and electricity supplies to more than 95% of its population.

It is now making the next step to become 100% organic, not only for practical reasons to grow more food, but also from philosophical point of view to protect the environment.

"Hopefully we can provide solutions. What is at stake is the future. We need governments who can make bold decisions now rather than later," Agriculture Minister Pema Gyamtsho said in an interview.

The small country in the eastern end of the Himalayas is not new to taking a lead role on issues around the environment and sustainability.

In 1971 Bhutan set a new concept for measuring progress. Rather than using the amount of goods and services produced by the country (known as Gross Domestic Product or GDP) it implemented a new measure and criteria known as Gross National Happiness or GNH.

This measures the spiritual, physical, social and environmental wellbeing of its inhabitants and territory. This type of development model has been discussed at the UN and has been publicly backed by leaders from Britain and France.

The latest move by Bhutan to ban the sales of pesticides and herbicides is testament to the country's leading environmental stance: these chemicals are petrol based and their residues end up in the food we eat and damage the soil and the water quality.

So what are we waiting for? While Bhutan is small and its agriculture scale rather limited, from a global perspective we can still learn from its approach.

The move to turn 100% organic is prompted by farmers becoming convinced that they need to work in harmony with nature. This idea that we need to work with nature is a central aspect of farming that we seem to forget and which should be put at the core of agriculture.

"Sumant Kumar was overjoyed when he harvested his rice last year. There had been good r...

Well this certainly seems like related news:

"Sumant Kumar was overjoyed when he harvested his rice last year. There had been good rains in his village of Darveshpura in north-east India and he knew he could improve on the four or five tonnes per hectare that he usually managed. But every stalk he cut on his paddy field near the bank of the Sakri river seemed to weigh heavier than usual, every grain of rice was bigger and when his crop was weighed on the old village scales, even Kumar was shocked.

This was not six or even 10 or 20 tonnes. Kumar, a shy young farmer in Nalanda district of India's poorest state Bihar, had – using only farmyard manure and without any herbicides – grown an astonishing 22.4 tonnes of rice on one hectare of land. This was a world record and with rice the staple food of more than half the world's population of seven billion, big news."

and

"While the "green revolution" that averted Indian famine in the 1970s relied on improved crop varieties, expensive pesticides and chemical fertilisers, SRI appears to offer a long-term, sustainable future for no extra cost. With more than one in seven of the global population going hungry and demand for rice expected to outstrip supply within 20 years, it appears to offer real hope. Even a 30% increase in the yields of the world's small farmers would go a long way to alleviating poverty.

"Farmers use less seeds, less water and less chemicals but they get more without having to invest more.

"It is a set of ideas, the absolute opposite to the first green revolution [of the 60s] which said that you had to change the genes and the soil nutrients to improve yields. That came at a tremendous ecological cost,"

The Natural Environment is the greatest asset the earth has. What has taken place for centuries to pollute the earth has become a huge distortion for everyone. When each person wakes up and takes a hold of their own life, they will Become MoreAware and See what has to be done. It will take courage to step back from all the harmful Marketing Ploy, but it can be done. Good for you Bhutan... Have Fun!
Duane, the Founder of The NUPresentation Foundation, ALLHumanitarian Developers and Educators, Huntington Beach, California, USA. www.TheNUPresentation.Info

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